Paul French examines a controversial and revealing period in the early life of the legendary Wallis, Duchess of Windsor–her one year in China in the mid-1920s – Her Lotus Year.

Wallis Simpson never intended to go to China. But in 1924, she followed her US Navy commander husband east. He was assigned to the South China Patrol stationed in Hong Kong. Wallis spent some time in Hong Kong, and made a visit to the small foreign enclave of Shamian Island in Guangzhou. Eventually she decided to leave her physically abusive husband and fled north into mainland China.

Wallis subsequently spent time in a Shanghai both glamorous and cosmopolitan but also surrounded by skirmishing warlords. She then moved on, first to Tianjin (in the grip of a typhoid epidemic) and then to Beijing. Here Wallis would remain for the period she would later refer to with great nostalgia as her Lotus Year referencing Homer’s Lotus Eaters who lived in a state of dreamy forgetfulness, never to return home. Moving in with friends who lived in considerable style in a traditional hutong house, she spent her days scouring the local markets for antiques, discovering a lifelong passion for jade, and her trademark style of qipao-inspired dresses and sleek black chignon hairdo.

Wallis’s time would be curtailed by political events in China. It was a period of great upheaval. Hong Kong and Guangzhou were beset by hard-fought labour struggles, while Shanghai and Beijing were surrounded by skirmishing warlord armies. The Last Emperor Puyi was expelled from the Forbidden City, and the fledgling Republican Government looked set to topple after the death of its figurehead Dr Sun Yat-sen. A deadly typhoid epidemic raged, and a series of violent anti-foreign riots swept the country. Ostensibly Wallis lived in a protective foreign bubble, but she was not blind to the chaos surrounding her.

Later, Wallis’s time in China would be used against her. Racially inflected salacious rumours of a promiscuous period were whispered around London society in the 1930s, the intent being to wreck her relationship with Edward VIII. That didn’t work – Edward abdicated the throne and on their marriage Wallis became the Duchess of Windsor after which their enforced exile began. As it happened the rumours about Wallis, collected in a so-called ‘China Dossier’, were unfounded, but the truth about her year in China is however far more interesting. Perhaps surprisingly, a century later, much of Wallis’s China remains for those who might wish to follow in her footsteps.

The Speaker

Born and currently based in London, Paul French lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. After a career as a widely published analyst and commentator on China he is now a full-time author, focusing on China and Asia in the first half of the twentieth century.

His true crime book Midnight in Peking was a New York Times Bestseller, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Mystery Writers’ of America ‘Edgar’ award winner for Best Fact Crime, and a Crime Writers’ Association (UK) ‘Dagger’ award for non- fiction. His Kirkus-starred book City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir focuses on the dancehalls, casinos and cabarets of wartime Shanghai. Both Midnight in Peking and City of Devils are being adapted for film and television.

French is also a regular contributor and book reviewer for various publications including The South China Morning Post, Financial Times Weekend, Mekong Review, CNN, The China Project, Ponto Final (Macao), and Crime Reads. He occasionally works in audio drama with productions including Peking Noir for BBC Radio 3, Death at the Airport: The Plot Against Kim Jong-nam for BBC Radio 4, and the twelve-part Audible Original, Murders of Old China.

PROGRAMME

Time: 7 pm - 8pm, Hong Kong Time (11:00 am – 12:00 noon, UK Time)

Venue: Online talk by Zoom

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